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Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?
I've just been a little curious about this recently, since I've noticed things appearing that weren't there before. I now have a "flag" link under the title on comments pages, and can set a topcolor in my profile. What becomes unlockable, and what are the milestones to each?
- brandonkm 18y agoAt 250 apparently you can change the color of the bar on the top. 6 more points to go! *Thanks to everyone who voted this up. I can now confirm that this is indeed legit. On your settings page you can enter a six digit hexadecimal number that will change the color of the top bar. I'm going to try some of these out! http://www.somacon.com/cgi/colorchart.pl http://www.somacon.com/cgi/colorchart.pl
- fgimenez 18y agoConsider my upmod as a research grant. Please report results.
- maxwell 18y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors http://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors
- mojombo 18y agoThere's an easier way: http://colorpicker.com/ http://colorpicker.com/
- bd 18y agoCool, it looks like these are actual live topcolors from HN database (distinct colors set in preferences by all users). I made a color map sorted on hues and lightness: http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/hn/colors.png http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/hn/colors.png
- rms 18y agoYou've won everything you're going to get. Congratulations.
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y agoNo, I believe there's a higher threshold yet to post polls.
- robertk 18y agoHow do you post polls? I'm in like...the top 250...I should be able to.
- frisco 18y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll
- jyothi 18y agoThanks! I wanted this so many times earlier. Never figured how to post a poll. This should have been exposed from the submit link.
- SwellJoe 18y agoThis should have been exposed from the submit link. I believe this is a not so subtle way to discourage gratuitous use of polls. I, for one, think that having it be an invisible feature is a great win for human decency--the knowledge that it is there prevents people from "vote up if" posts, but having it hidden doesn't remind people constantly that they can run polls to their heart's content. Since polls are almost universally free of useful content, but people still love to create them, this is, perhaps, the best that can be done.
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- frisco 18y agoThat's actually available at 0. http://arclanguage.org/item?id=3426 http://arclanguage.org/item?id=3426
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- vaksel 18y agosecond hand info: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404872 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404872 I see someone corrected that post too
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- walterk 18y agoI have downvote arrows on comments, but at some point they ceased to affect the score. Which is to say, I click on the downvote, and the points go down by one, but upon reloading the page, the score is the same as before. (And yes, it's happened enough times that I know it isn't just someone voting the comment back up in the intervening period.)
- jjs 18y agoCould the time to downvote have already passed? (i.e. you downvoted on a stale page)
- _5y6p 18y agoIt happens even if the comment I'm downvoting was posted a minute ago.
- gravitycop 18y agoI have downvote arrows on comments, but at some point they ceased to affect the score. It's part of karma-grump protection. One's downvotes do not count, unless he upvotes first and at least as many times. If you run across something you want to downvote, first find something else to upvote. If you want to rack up downvote ammo to spare, upvote often. For example, if you upvote 10 times in a row, you will have 10 downvotes available. After that, your downvotes will no longer count, unless and until you do more upvoting. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301 I'm considering adding an additional layer of protection against grumps: to only allow users as many downvotes as they've made upvotes. That way each user's net contribution to the global karma would be at least neutral.
- _5y6p 18y agoThanks for pointing this out. I suspect there may be something genuinely broken with my downvoting, though, because despite having only upvoted for a good while, my downvotes continue to not count. Alternatively, HN is keeping a backlog of my uncounted downvotes, and counting them in order as I make more upvotes. Thus, as long as there's a backlog, any new downvote I make will initially not count. Personally, I think the >=0 net karma rule goes too far. I've tended to downvote more than I upvote because I drift towards policing behavior (not "grumpness": not all people who downvote more than they upvote can be classified as grumps, which is a highly subjective notion anyway), and generally have high standards for what I consider worthy of an upvote. Social moderation systems have to account for the variety of sociological roles. Not to mention, the net karma of the site may be negative, but a >=0 rule will never allow this state to be represented. It is also impossible to determine what my net karma contribution is, and thus that the >=0 rule is even in effect. Net karma contribution should appear on a user's profile page, or at the top menu bar. I shouldn't be expected to track my karma contribution manually.
- CalmQuiet 18y agoMy question would be: why the secrecy? HN worried that transparency about the processes of ratings & their "rewards" (which (plus + $5.00) will buy you a cappuccino) would lead to abuse of the system? I think openness system would allow for HN viewers to discuss the value of different site-karma processes -- enabling the site designers (and all of us) to benefit more from the community's collective genius and experience (on this issue the way it does on others).
- pg 18y agoIt's simpler than you think. As moderately dangerous new features got added, I gave them karma thresholds to avoid abuse. Since there's no man page there's nowhere to list them all. Most got explained individually in News News though.
- CalmQuiet 18y agoThanks for the reply. That leads me rather automatically to rephrase my question: "Why no man page?" And (sorry to be such a newb) what is News News? Do you mean just http://news.ycombinator.com/news http://news.ycombinator.com/news ? If so the SEARCH button/form is proving hard for me to find !?¿?!
- cx01 18y agoNews news is here: http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html
- frisco 18y agoThere is no search. See: searchyc.com
- CalmQuiet 18y agoGreat lead, frisco. Perhaps if they eventually get stable and maybe offers some "advanced search" YC will want to incorporate it into HN site. [or at least put a link to it atop HN page - why should visitors have to ask a question to know where to go for a search feature?] It's speed seems excellent (early on a Monday morning).
- bouncingsoul 18y ago20 karma – downvote comments. 200 karma – make polls (http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll). 250 karma – customize the top bar background color. ??? karma – flag posts and comments (on their individual page).
- frisco 18y agoFlagging is much lower; somewhere in the 100s.
- Oompa 18y agoIt has to be. I have 206 and can flag.
- gravitycop 18y agoFlagging is much lower; somewhere in the 100s. It's 51, the same as downvote.
- zepolen 18y agoI think the 20 limit is wrong, since I'm past that and still can't downvote comments.
- 11ren 18y agoI just created a poll with karma of 196
- chris11 18y agoI created one with a karma of 150, so it has got to be way lower than 200.
- rodrigo 18y agoI have 47 and cannot downvote.I can flag since around my twenties thought.
- gravitycop 18y ago
- lani0 18y agoyour destiny unlocks with karma. it ensures that in your next re-incarnation, you do not come back as a Digg user
- giles_bowkett 18y agoAt 600+ karma, you get infinite bonus mushrooms and infinite ammo. You have to beat the game twice on impossible mode in the military suit and max out all your guns, though, even the stupid one that takes forever to fire and then the zombie eats your head because you were sitting there trying to warm it up instead of shooting zombies, which would have been the logical thing to do. At 1000+ karma, you take off your helmet and guess what you're a chick. If you win three times in a row on impossible mode with perfect karma without getting shot once, using nothing but the annoying gun that takes forever, you take off your armor and guess what you're a hot chick. Then you can play the game again wearing a bikini. At 2000+ karma, Paul Graham comes to your house, tells you the meaning of life, and makes you a sandwich. It is the best sandwich known to man. Only rich people can make this sandwich.
- pg 18y agoThese numbers are way too low. I'd have to have gone to 94 people's houses and made them sandwiches. (I already explained the meaning of life in a footnote in "Great Hackers.")
- Xichekolas 18y agoHmmm... I'm getting close to my 2000... Can I request a chicken sandwich with my zen awakening? Rumor has it that at 20,000 karma you get to know nickb's true identity.
- jwilliams 18y agoNah - you've got it the wrong way round... You can only reach 20,000 by knowing the true nature of nickb.
- prakash 18y ago[3] I think this is what people mean when they talk about the "meaning of life." On the face of it, this seems an odd idea. Life isn't an expression; how could it have meaning? But it can have a quality that feels a lot like meaning. In a project like a compiler, you have to solve a lot of problems, but the problems all fall into a pattern, as in a signal. Whereas when the problems you have to solve are random, they seem like noise. http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html
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- kwamenum86 18y agoEvery two weeks it seems like someone writes this post and it hits the top 10. Astounding.
- rms 18y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404872 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404872 There was one a month ago
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- cdibona 18y agoThis is pretty interesting to me. When karma was implemented at /. we used to expose the number, but then the number became why people did things on /. Then we obscured the number by replacing it with english words like "excellent" for the top karma scores, then we started paying off in terms of allow people to moderate and meta-moderate. It was pretty neat at the time, but I have to admit I like HNs system. It seems like it embraces the karma rather than obscuring it as some kind of necessary but lamentable side effect, which is how it sometimes felt at /.
- nailer 18y agoI always, always, wanted /. to announce the 'excellent' in the Mortal Kombat voice.
- sanj 18y agoThis reminds me of a band that gave out stamps when you came to their concerts. The top levels were awesome: 30 Stamps: Special Date #1 Dinner and dancing with Dave. 36 Stamps: Special Date #2. Dinner and dancing with either Jean, Mike, or Murray. 50 Stamps: Ass Brand. The Frühead gets the Früvous budgie-dog (Larry Boniface Clebdon) branded on their ass. This is administered by a member of the band.